Aisha Gani's evening summary

Part of a street has been torn away by swollen river, bridges have collapsed and almost 60,000 people in the North have been left without power.

A rescue team helps to evacuate people from their homes after Storm Desmond caused flooding. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Train services will be down at the beginning of the week and the government has called an emergency COBRA meeting this morning to deal with the chaos from Storm Desmond that swept across Britain this weekend.

Electricity North West confirmed that the majority face shortages for “a number of days” as it works to fix further faults caused by the flooding.

The military have been on the ground. Around 350 army personnel have been made available from 2nd Battalion Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, based in Weeton Barracks near Preston, to assist with the general flooding response since the early hours.

Members of the British army assist the emergency services in a flooded street in Carlisle. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

Major road closures are also still in place due to blockages and following a number of accidents involving heavy goods vehicles on Saturday.

Environment Secretary Elizabeth Truss said: “We know what a devastating impact flooding has on communities and our thoughts are with those affected this weekend.” She added: “I urge people to check the latest flood updates via the EA website and Twitter.”

A number of police forces are asking local communities to help look out for each other

Carlisle, in Cumbria, was one of the most worst hit areas.Hundreds of homes have been flooded and more than 1,000 people evacuated. Parts of Cumbria have been hit with more than a month’s worth of rain in just 24 hours. Shap in Cumbria, saw 262.6mm of rainfall.

About 600 people had to be evacuated from their homes in the Borders town of Hawick. A severe flood warning is still active in the town and there are flood alerts along large sections of rivers in Tayside.

In London, a 90-year-old man died on Saturday after it was believed he was blown into the path of a bus near Finchley Central station. Concerns are also growing over an incident at the River Kent and police are searching for the elderly male believed to have fallen in the water.

Thanks for following the Guardian’s Storm Desmond live updates. You can continue to update me on twitter – @aishagani.

My colleague Helen Pidd, the Guardian’s north of England editor, sent this dispatch from Lancaster:

Army trucks have been stationed at a hospital in Lancaster to act as ambulances after flooding cut the city off from the power grid and blocked all but one access route.

The Royal Lancaster infirmary (RLI) is running on generator power after an electricity substation flooded, cutting electricity to 55,000 homes and businesses in Lancaster, Morecambe, Carnforth and the surrounding areas.

Outside the hospital’s A&E department, troops from a battalion at Weeton barracks, near Blackpool, were on standby to pick up seriously ill patients in camouflage trucks if normal ambulances were unable to.

On Sunday morning, soldiers moved one woman in a coma from the Victoria hospital in Morecambe to the RLI, after all the road bridges over the river Lune between Morecambe and Lancaster were shut due to flood damage. Currently the only way to cross between the two towns is via the Carlisle footbridge or a long detour on the M6.

Helen Pidd (@helenpidd)

One fella was cooking scrambled eggs on a camping stove outside his home in Lancaster; long queues for pay phones pic.twitter.com/LEi4UEsQCv

A crowd had gathered outside Sainsbury’s by the river Lune where staff were handing out free baps and loaves of bread. James Melody, 20, and his girlfriend Esme Moxley, also 20, were happy to have got their hands on one brown loaf. “It’s so weird to see people using phoneboxes. I wouldn’t know how,” said Melody.

Helen Pidd (@helenpidd)

Sainsbury's in Lancaster was giving out free loaves of bread today, as the city told no electricity before Tuesday pic.twitter.com/KYZQaqOStG

I think the only time I’ve used one was when I was little, to do prank phone calls,” said Moxley, who was wondering how she would get back to her home in Leeds, with no trains running north of Preston.

Elsewhere, the blitz spirit reigned. Outside his house on Greaves Road, teacher Piers Napper was cooking scrambled eggs on a camping stove. “I rescued it from the garage in the dark this morning,” he said. “We’re hoping the gas will last until we get power back.”

The Scottish government’s resilience committee met for a third time on Sunday to assess the impact of the flooding, the Press Association reports.

John Swinney, deputy first minister, said:

Over the last 24 hours, Scotland has faced torrential rain and severe winds. This has been most acute in the Borders, Dumfries and Galloway and Tayside, where some residents were evacuated and we know there has been some damage to property and infrastructure.

Experts will be at affected sites throughout the day, assessing damage and beginning repairs, Swinney said, adding:

However, although water levels are dropping, they remain very high and continued vigilance is needed. These water levels can in themselves be dangerous so I continue to urge people to pay heed to road closures and weather warnings, as well as any local advice provided by police or the fire service.

Flooding along the river Teviot in the Scottish Borders. Photograph: Chris Strickland/Demotix/Corbis

This has been a particularly severe event with multiple parts of Scotland feeling the impacts of flooding. The outlook is improving, rivers have peaked and will be falling back through the rest of the day, giving us some respite.

“However, the impact of flooding with be with us for a while yet, although we’re moving into a recovery phase. Areas of standing water will persist and so anyone travelling will need to remain vigilant.

Becker confirmed the latest severe weather event has seen some of the highest river flows for a considerable period of time:

The river Tay at Perth peaked at levels not seen since 2006 and the Teviot at Hawick was the second highest in 30 years of record. The Teith at Callander was the second-highest in a 45 year record. The team at SEPA are continuing to monitor the situation and watching river levels closely.

More rain on the way for flood-hit areas in Scotland

Forecasters warn that more rain is on the way in Scotland. Although a rare red weather alert that was in place for the region has been lifted, flood warnings remain for parts of the Borders and Dumfries and Galloway.

At the peak of the storm, around 300 homes were evacuated in Hawick as the River Teviot burst its banks

Properties in Newcastleton, Langholm, Annandale and Eskdale were also affected.

More than 100mm of rain fell in the area throughout Friday and Saturday, according to Met Office figures.

The River Tay in Perth was also closely monitored as it approach its highest level for a decade

A handful of homes were evacuated in Bridge of Earn and Blair Atholl on Saturday night.

The weather also brought widespread travel chaos with a series of landslides and road closures.

The Met Office is now warning of more rain this week with yellow weather alerts covering Tayside, Fife, Stratchclyde, the Borders and south west Scotland until Thursday.

A spokesman said:

A spell of persistent rain, heavy at times, is expect to affect parts of Scotland, northwestern England and Wales from Monday late afternoon or early evening onwards into Monday night.

The spokesman added while the rain will neither be as heavy nor as prolonged as recent rain, “please be aware that in view of the saturated nature of the ground and high river levels further localised flooding and disruption to transport is possible.”

A bridge which carries the A592 over the northern end of Ullswater at Pooley Bridge collapsed, cutting another main route through Cumbria.

Hospitals at Lancaster and Carlisle have both lost power and are running on generators, which should last a few days.

Cumbria police, military, fire service, ambulance service and other agencies were continuing to treat Carlisle as a priority location in the county to warn and inform people of the situation regarding the flooded areas.

Properties remain under water in Carlisle, especially in the east of the city, which has been significantly affected. A limited supply of sandbags are available from the corner of Lismore Street and Aglionby Street for people to collect.

A priority for all agencies continues to be protecting the two substations in Carlisle. Over 4,000 properties are still without electricity and all areas in Carlisle are at significant risk of losing power.

More on the Army being drafted in: About 350 army personnel have been made available from 2nd Battalion Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, based in Weeton barracks near Preston, to assist with the general flooding response since the early hours.

Member of the armed forces check on residents on Lismore Street, following flooding in Carlisle. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

They arrived with two vehicles to help evacuate and warn residents in Carlisle – and also sent a Chinook helicopter to move high-velocity pumping equipment needed to attend to an electricity substation. Streets near to where the river Petteril flows into the river Eden, close to the centre of Carlisle, had flooded as the tide came in and added to already torrential rainfall.

David Wildridge, his wife Melanie and children Maddie, 11, and Ayden, nine – carrying his teddy bear, had grabbed a few bags and their dog, Fletch, before being rescued by boat from their home in the centre of Carlisle, the Press Association reports.

Wildridge said emergency services were worried about a crack in a join between a flood defence wall and a bridge over the river Eden close to their home.

A woman is helped through flood waters by members of the RNLI and the armed forces on Warwick Street, following flooding in Carlisle. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

He said:

Our house is one of the last ones on the list, we’ve been taken away in the last half hour. We live very near to the bridge and the flood water in the house came up through the floor, about a foot of water. There’s nothing you can do about it. We just took the advice of the rescuers and left.

Peter Brown had to leave his flooded house in the early hours of Sunday morning with his daughter, Rebecca, 15.

Brown, a lorry driver, said:

We got a knock on the door at 5.45am saying we will have to evacuate the premises.

I literally grabbed a few things, put valuables upstairs. You just watch while your house gets submerged.

We were going to put Christmas decorations up last night but I was too tired from work.

My living room and staircase is now under water.

We could watch the water creeping higher up the street until it got to our house.

I think if it wasn’t for the flood defences it could have been a lot worse.

The amount of rainfall we have had is something like two months in the space of four hours.

Robert Reid, a sergeant in a junior army cadet organisation, had opened up their small hut near Warwick Road about 1am to serve cups of tea and soup to some 25 residents who had been evacuated throughout the night.

Reid said:

The chopper was up and the police sirens were blaring, they were going to houses getting people out.

He said some people were tearful and children were “hysterical” at having to leave their homes.

It’s a devastating time to be flooded. It’s 6 December, 19 days to Christmas and a lot of people have just lost their homes. They are devastated.

We just gave them tea and somewhere dry and warm and we were donated sandwiches by a local resident.

It’s nice to see the local community coming together, people are donating tea and coffee and cup-a-soups.

Emergency services in the north of England are becoming increasingly stretched, the Press Association reports. Soldiers have been deployed to support local emergency services by helping to move people from their homes in streets where cars have been almost entirely submerged.

West Midlands fire service has also sent firefighters and specialist equipment to the county and its control room staff are helping to answer the high number of calls from their Birmingham office.

There will be a lot of soggy biscuits as a leading biscuit manufacturer, the Carlisle United Biscuits factory, is believed to be flooded to a depth of 5ft – on par with levels reached during major floods in 2005 – and employees are being told to stay home until further notice.

Rory Stewart, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs minister, said flooding in his constituency has been “the worst that anybody’s experienced” and acknowledged water had “overtopped” existing flood defences.

He told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend:

We’re going to look very, very carefully at all the defences up and down Cumbria for exactly that reason. This is a very extreme and unprecedented event, early indications suggest we’ve passed the UK record on rainfall in Cumbria.

Stewart, also the Tory MP for Penrith and the Border, said people in the area had shown “incredible community spirit” in the face of the rainfall.